Jackson stood up then, a sneer on his face. “I know what I am. I’m a fucking flesh-eater, worse than dead and I’m sick of you all reminding me of what I lost. Every day I wake up thinking it was all a dream and I can go home. That I can go back to school and see my friends and my grandma,” he paused, trying to push down that lump that always formed when he thought of his grandmother. His parents had told him flat out that he was no longer welcome in their home and that his grandmother, due to her psychic gifts was too much of a temptation for his baser beast to be around. “But I can’t go back,” he finished in a tight voice.

Chas was on his feet in an instant. Part of them was animal and because of that the beast in them gave them certain abilities; agility and swiftness one of them. The second was the means to communicate with one of their own through psychic wave lengths. Jackson never used this link to converse with his new family; ever.

“Listen,” when Chas would have said kid he stopped, seeing Jackson’s frown. “Jackson, I spent the first years of this existence by myself. I didn’t have anyone telling me how all this was supposed to work. I lived in caves and burned out huts, eating whatever living creature crawled under my door at night. And that’s a shit load better than the other’s had to deal with. So staying in a nice room in Ambrose’s home isn’t the worst place you could be. Don’t forget that there are still people out there who want us dead and those who wouldn’t mind looking the other way.”

Jackson turned away from Chas on a snort. He was still pissed, but he was smart enough not to comment. Olivier Prince, the bastard who had murdered his friend Clarissa, almost extinguishing her life for good. He had been the catalyst to convince Francisco Fatio to take over Jackson’s body so he could absorb the life essence and psychic energy from the kills and as yet he was still at large. Prince was a strong death Bokor and the flesh-eaters worst enemy. They all knew that he hadn’t gone far and it would only be a matter of time before he returned to St. Augustine.